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You are here: Home / 2005 / Archives for September 2005

Archives for September 2005

A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning

September 28, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

SheepblokeNormally driving to work is not that exciting. I’m lucky that I don’t have a big commute but I still have to negotiate peak hour traffic and it’s normally quite boring.

This morning, however, I passed a ute that had lots of sheep and some dogs in the back. This isn’t that out of the ordinary, but these were all fake (made out of fibreglass). I had to look twice and then look back to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

Because it stuck in my head and made me laugh I had a quick look at their Sheepbloke website. Don’t think I’d ever be in the market for one of these but it was a good light-hearted way to start the day.

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Increase productivity – what a load of bullshit

September 27, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

As someone who will be affected by Australian’s Industrial relations reforms I watched with interest the ABC’s Four Corners show on Monday night about the ‘Brave New Workplace‘.

‘In the next few weeks, barring some unforeseen political accident, John Howard will finally get to deliver on his bold vision. He will steer through the most radical upheaval of the system that governs how Australians work.’ (ABC – Four Corners website)

I watched this show because I thought there might be some argument they posed that might convince me that these reforms might actually mean a Brave New Workplace.

I am convinced though, that it won’t. Our beloved Prime Minister John Howard (oh how I cannot bear to watch that man on television but because I wanted to watch the whole show I did watch him) kept saying that these new reforms will increase productivity. HOW??? I have this question for you John.

How can taking away my current enterprise agreement which is about 200 pages long and replacing it with an Australian Workplace Agreement that I’ve been told will be about seven pages long increase my productivity? Obviously I will lose a heap of my current entitlements and I don’t imagine my pay will rise to anywhere near compensate me for those lost entitlements. This will not increase my productivity – this will lower my morale and therefore drastically lower my productivity.

Well, this would be John’s answer about productivity increasing as he told the reporter for the Four Corners show, Sally Neighbour,

‘Because they will give a much greater focus on agreement-making at the workplace level. And experience all around the world tells us that if we allow individual employers and employees to work out the arrangements that best suit them, the businesses go better, they make more money and they pay their workers higher wages.’

The organisation I work for (and I dare say most organisations) cannot pay higher wages unless all our other conditions are cut and once employees realise that their higher? take home pay packet doesn’t cover annual leave loading, sick leave, parental leave, maternity leave, superannuation etc etc, productivity is surely going to decline.

Also I fail to see how each individual employee, especially in large organisations, will be able to negotiate their own agreement. It will not happen. Imagine if there are 1000 employees. How long will it take each employee to negotiate an agreement? The cost to the organisation would be huge just doing that. I cannot see it happening.

As our union rep told a group of us, and as Sally Neighbour reported, John Howard is saying these reforms will bring about more flexible workplaces. Flexible for whom? Our union rep used the story that his dad used to line up outside the factory each morning in the hope that he might get a day’s work that day. Hopefully it won’t come to that for most workers but if it did, how can we pay off our expensive mortgages, or even get mortgages because the last time I got a mortgage I needed to be in stable employment to get one. With John Howard’s Brave New Flexible Workplace I probably won’t have a stable job.

Universities are also being held to funding ransom with this Brave New Workplace. If they don’t adopt the Higher Education Workplace Reform Requirements (HEWRR’s) they will lose quite a bit of government funding, all with the intention of making universities more flexible and productive.

No, I’m still not convinced that the industrial relations reforms will mean increased productivity. I am convinced though, that they will mean increased profits for corporations which is all that matters right?

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A music diet change

September 26, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

HappyporpaktmocUp until about the mid 1980s I listened to top 40 music and while I guess I enjoyed it I didn’t love it. In about 1985 or 1986 I met a drummer of an alternative type band and fancied him rotten and was therefore introduced to the music that he listened to which had a large go-out-and-see-it-live component.

He eventually started playing in a band that used to quite regularly play in pubs around the city and this was my introduction to a whole different culture than I’d been previously used to. That is a diet of mostly awful nightclubs playing the top 40 music of that era which was mostly awful too.

It was quite a culture change for me and probably life changing in that through that band scene I met a couple of people who I am still friends with. Through them I got introduced to my group of friends now. I can’t imagine what I would be doing now if I hadn’t gone down this path but I think my life would either be quite different or I would have met this group perhaps via other avenues. Who knows?

Being the collector of some things that I am I have a heap of band fliers that I kept from going out and seeing bands from this era and the picture accompanying this post is one of them. This would be about the only one I have that has a year date, 1987. I don’t go out and see bands anywhere near as much any more so don’t know if bands still do fliers like they used to. I suspect they don’t as I haven’t had one for a long time, or been handed one at a gig. I guess now that Adelaide has two main street magazines that cover local music band fliers aren’t needed as much.

Happy Porpak weren’t that well known and didn’t last that long but The Mark of Cain (TMOC) were around then and are still around today. I saw them go through numerous drummers – including an awful stint where there was no drummer but a drum machine. I initially liked them because when I first heard them they sounded a bit like Joy Division and having newly been introduced to Joy Division and liking them, any band that sounded sort of similar was bound to be good to me. I even saw them in Sydney at the Coogee I think it was. It’s weird going to see a local band (to you) at a venue in another city because I kept expecting to see people I knew there but of course I didn’t. Although it can happen and did to me once in Melbourne at the Prince of Wales I think.

TMOC used to play a lot at the Royal Oak Hotel which is now the Worlsdend Hotel on Hindley Street. It was a very divey pub back then like a lot of the pubs I used to go and see bands in but that didn’t matter. I was there for the music and for the people. The only thing I didn’t like about the Royal Oak was beer being served in reused plastic cups.

TMOC went on to bigger and better things but I’m glad I got to see them in the early days before they got too popular.

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Less traffic on the road

September 25, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Yesterday was the Australian Football League grand final. This doesn’t mean anything to me except that I was on the road yesterday and I noticed that there was less traffic. I had to go down south to visit some friends at Port Willunga and aside from having to slow down needlessly to 40kms per hour for two long stretches because of ‘roadworks’ (I put roadworks in quote marks because the roadworks are so nearly finished that I could not see any reason why traffic had to slow down) between Port Noarlunga and Port Willunga, it was a quick trip. I won’t go in to a diatribe about how if the Southern Expressway had been built to deal with two-way traffic it would have been even quicker.

The main reason I went down this way was to go and see Wallace and Gromit’s the Were-Rabbit. I like movies like this where adults can enjoy it on a different level than kids. JJ enjoyed the big rabbit and all the other rabbits and I liked the little things like Wallace wearing a cardboard box to cover his nakedness that said ‘may contain nuts’. JJ didn’t get this as he doesn’t read yet and he doesn’t know that nuts has another meaning apart from they make him sick. There were heaps of other things that many adults would get that many kids wouldn’t like the be humane to animals thread throughout.

I spoke to my sister today about the movie and she said when she saw it last week that she was bored with it. I definitely wasn’t bored with it. I thought it was very clever. I appreciate the amount of work it took to make (five years if I remember correctly). I appreciate the underlying messages and the humour. I also loved all the gadgets that Wallace invented.

With this, and the new take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I have had two recent movie experiences I’ve been able to enjoy, and not just endure, with JJ.

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I wish I had his energy

September 20, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Even when JJ was sick yesterday morning the first thing he said to me was that he wanted to go to childcare. As he had woken up at 8.30am which is a major sleep in for him I doubted that he was in a fit state to go to childcare.

Whenever he’s not up by 7ish I almost guiltily lie in bed and read a book. If I still haven’t heard anything by 8am I um and aaah about checking on him. I usually do go and check on him to make sure he’s still breathing and therefore still alive. I did this yesterday morning, twice, and the third time I went in I could see two dark open eyes staring back at me, which is when he asked the childcare question.

As I mentioned yesterday we did stay at home and were in our pajamas all morning and would have stayed that way but I had to get some fresh air. He still just fits into his pram so I bundled him into it so we (including the dog) could get some fresh air.

Then about mid afternoon his sickness just flew away. Before I knew it he was running around, getting his toy dinosaurs out of the bath basket to play with on the lounge room floor and before I knew it he was asking me loads of questions and before I knew it I was telling him off for something quite trivial. Just like that his wellness came back and just like that my mothering a sick child sympathy left me. Back to normal.

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Am still in my dressing gown

September 19, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Yesterday I had planned to go to Peace in the Park. Twas a nice day, friends were going to be there and I was quite looking forward to it. But it was not to be. JJ was sick yesterday, high temperature and he didn’t want to eat. I always know when he’s sick if he doesn’t want to eat as he’s normally a big scoffer.

We both had a sleep in the afternoon – him because he wasn’t well and me because, well I just had a lazy day. It was great actually. I so rarely sleep during the day, even when I’ve had two hours sleep the night before and I didn’t have this excuse yesterday. Of course I can’t have a sleep if JJ is not having a sleep as well as I couldn’t relax if he was up and running around and it would just be plain irresponsible.

He’s still not eating today and we’re still both in our pajamas. I will logoff shortly and go and attend to my parenting.

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Uncle Alf – Post World War II

September 17, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Uncle Alf was one of the lucky ones. He made it back from the war and apparently this photo was taken in 1945. I wish I knew more about his time there. Perhaps if he were fighting in war in the present he would keep a blog. In his day he perhaps sent letters home to his family. I have never seen any of these letters so they either weren’t sent, or more likely, not kept.

Unclealfsoldieruniform1945_1

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